Small as this strike was, in several respects it was remarkable. It is an instance of the crystalization of unskilled labor into unions and its spontaneous outbreak—in this instance without any revolutionary I. W. W. leadership. The strike was not in an industrial center, but in a community of homes, and there were people who looked out of their windows and saw how the type of hired detective, who usually operates in out of the way strike regions, shot into a crowd of strikers without guns, who were in more senses than one, to be sure, taking the law into their own hands, but doing so only long after the authority which the men with the guns represented had failed to enforce it.
But beyond all that, the strike revealed the dread, the utter misunderstanding, the gap between the people who live by the sides of the roads and the men who build them. They did not know it was a desire for settled employment, for homes instead of padrone’s barracks that was arousing these workers.
SOME NEW STATE LAWS AFFECTING WOMEN’S WORK
Rhode Island was the first state to legislate in 1913 regarding women’s hours of work. The law had previously failed to provide any protection for women employed in stores. It had prohibited more than fifty-six hours’ work in one week in manufacturing and mechanical establishments, but it allowed more than ten hours’ work in one day for various causes. The new law fixes a flat ten-hour day and fifty-four-hour week for all women employed in any “factory, manufacturing, mechanical, business or mercantile establishment.”
Several measures were presented to the Legislature dealing with this subject. The bill as passed was introduced as a substitute, at the request of Chief Factory Inspector J. Ellery Hudson. It was strongly supported at the hearings before the Legislature by the Consumers’ League of Rhode Island, by the representatives of the labor unions, women’s clubs, and the Rhode Island Medical Society. The removal of the former exceptions in the law is as great a gain as the reduction of hours and the inclusion of mercantile houses. The bill marks a notable advance in Rhode Island.
Another important bill recently passed through effective concerted action was in Delaware, where no law was ever before enacted to limit women’s hours of labor. Two years ago the Consumers’ League of Delaware carried on a campaign for a ten-hour bill. This measure passed the Legislature, but was amended almost beyond recognition in the process, and in the end it was not signed by the governor. This year a ten-hour law committee of the Consumers’ League was formed of which Margaret H. Shearman has been chairman. In spite of bitter opposition, a bill was carried through, providing for a ten-hour day and a fifty-five-hour week. Success followed a campaign of unusual vigor, conducted for months throughout the state. The new law includes women employed in many occupations—“in any mercantile, mechanical or manufacturing establishment; laundry, baking or printing establishment; telephone and telegraph office or exchange.” Women employed in canning establishments are exempted. Many other exceptions and amendments were pressed, but only one concession was made to secure the passage of the bill. This allows one working day of twelve hours each week.
In Texas the Legislature proved more compliant to the powerful lobby which opposed the passage of the first woman’s labor law in that state. Cotton-mill owners, raising the familiar cry that their industry would be ruined, succeeded in having themselves wholly excluded from the new act. They may therefore continue to employ their women workers as long as they choose, while the only manufacturers prohibited from employing women more than ten hours in one day and fifty-four hours in one week are those engaged in the garment trades!
According to the census of 1910 about 4,000 women are employed in the factories in Texas. Textiles are not separately listed, but it is fair to surmise that a small minority of the 4,000 women are garment workers covered by the new law, and that the great majority are employed in the cotton mills, without any legal limitation of hours.
Besides garment workers, the new law includes women employed in any “printing office, dressmaking or millinery establishment, hotel, restaurant or theater, telegraph or telephone office.” Laundry owners are allowed to employ women eleven hours in twenty-four, provided that “time and a half” is paid for work done in excess of ten hours. A comment by the Texas commissioner of labor on the new law is worth quoting: “Will not attempt to apologize for the same,” he writes, “but will admit it is not much.”
In New York a new law has been enacted which is of national as well as state importance. This measure was unanimously recommended by the New York State Factory Investigating Commission after careful investigation. It prohibits the employment of women at night in manufacture, between 10 P. M. and 6 A. M. It brings the Empire State with its 300,000 women employed in manufacture up to the level of the fourteen civilized nations of Europe which have by international treaty abolished the night work of women in factories.